This serendipity called life remains as much neglected as ignorance remains bliss.

Menu

A divorce… that could not last.

They had been married ever since they could remember–more than 20 years now. They did not even remember if it was out of love, or was it arranged. They were so young, it was called an infant marriage! It was thaaaat long.

They always viewed things from different perspectives, yet somehow always managed to focus on where their views overlapped.

Wherever one went, the other had to go. They even woke up together. And no doubt, slept together. But, sleeping together never brought any excitement. 😦 They had grown sick of the other. Totally sick.

You go your way. I’ll go mine.

[Angrily, without a thought] As you wish. And don’t you dare follow me. Huh!

So for the first time ever, they went their own separate ways and darted in opposite directions. But they felt intensely dizzy (click). They could not stand it, they had to unite. They realized, their fate to stay together was sealed, not by something flimsy as love, but PPRF!

Okay sorry folks for this crap, which I am sure even medicos would find crappy!

It is on simple eyes that mammals possess. Meaning, they always manage to look at the same object of focus, but from different angles. Yet, the brain fuses the two images into one. PPRF is one of centers involved in controlling horizontal eye movements.

Eyes show many types of involuntary and voluntary movements for proper functioning.

Saccades are jerky movements generated mainly in response to changes in visual field (what the brain ‘sees’), e.g., a moving target or sudden appearance of something new in the field–a fly falling in your soup! 😉 They bring the ‘pursued’ object just about to the center of visual focus.

Smooth pursuit movements perform the same function as saccades, but are better coordinated, with constant adjustments in direction and velocity of eye movements based on feedback from muscles moving the eyes as well as the images formed by the retinae.

The fast phase of a nystagmus is brain’s attempt to keep eyes still with regard to axis of the head when eyes get ‘distracted’ (the slow phase of nystagmus), say following head movement, saccades or sudden pursuit movements. So nystagmus could be normal, but occurs whenever eyes try to simultaneously look at different things! 😉

13 thoughts on “A divorce… that could not last.”

the story of the couple reminded me of an ad i’d seen recently, of a platinum jewellery company . don’t mean to equate your imagination with that, but yeah, that was the first image that came to my mind !

as for the post, my humble apologies, but I couldn’t read the part after the PPRL link !

Hey!We had studied about PPRF! In much less detail, of course. Actually, in REALLY less detail…we were studying about the structure of the eye and all the stupid textbook said was “The brain fuses the two images”. Thats it.

Sorry for causing you greater distress. I had no idea you study all day long! 😛 And that too ophthalmology. I somehow remembered you to be in absolute final year, with medicine, surgery et al!

Thanks for helping out Srishti. And ultra-LOL @ “it can be very bad for the person.” That is the understatement of the year!

In fact, it can also be very bad if it comes as a long question in the exam, like it had come for my batch in the University exam. Fortunately, I’d read nothing about it, but attended its lecture absolutely on an impulse, despite having an intense desire to bunk it. And that had strengthened my belief in God, and also helped me pass decently. 😉

@ Srishti:

Good, you were taught about PPRF. All the more discouragement from entering MBBS!

NCERT people have gone mad. In my time, out text books were really concept-oriented. I’d my sister’s tenth class text book a few years back, and I was appalled by abundant factual errors, and useless info to be memorized, like maybe, “typhoid is caused by Saloonella typhi, which is a gram-negative Bacillus.” Nothing factually wrong with this statement, but what’s its relevance? How are students to know what is gram negative and positive? What are they going to do with that useless information? No wonder, students would end up thinking biology is all about memorization. 😦

Anyway, the important thing is, in nystagmus, the eyes look shaky as if they are dizzy!…

TLOP and Insignia did not read further beyond PPRF, so they might have not understood the post. So, did not praise it. You’d praised the post, but initially did not understand it. And when you did understand the post, you just managed an ‘Ohhh…’, which I take to be not a praise. TUIB understood the post, but did not praise it. :,( And Rajan TheGreat’s comment is too philosophically generalized to be of any relevance to this post.

But then, I’ve decided to not give up on blogging, not yet! 😛

@ Insignia:

Well, PPRF is just a paired center in the brain, that controls eye movements specifically in the horizontal direction. So, it would allow the two eyes to converge, but never diverge. If something goes wrong with the two eyes such that they do not focus on the same precise point, there would be double vision (diplopia), which would cause nystagmus–jerky oscillatory movements of the eyes (looking as if they are dizzy)!

Anyway, your tangent of thoughts of conjoined was good. But the mistake you made was in anticipating an anticlimax! But precisely that anticipation will make you enjoy a few of my posts.